Then there was her stint at the Food Research Institute near Laingtree, post-marriage, pre-twins. She’d had a fancy title — inhouse public relations manager — but the scope of the job had been modest. On a regular basis she’d churned out press releases about Brussels sprouts and mutton; and once a month she’d produced a staff newsletter. The fact that this newsletter generally ended up being turned into origami and/or shredded to provide bedding for the secretary’s son’s pet rabbit never failed to produce in Lizzie the uncomfortable sense that the Food Research people perhaps overestimated their need for a public relations manager.
Nonetheless, she was glad now that she’d been given such an impressive title. It was the work of a moment to make her career with the institute sound nothing short of stellar.
But what could she write about the last few years of her life? “Mother” conveyed nothing of the complexity of the job she’d been doing since she’d given up working. “Home executive” didn’t even begin to describe the diversity of her experience these past years.
If she were to break the job down into titles, the list would be endless: housekeeper; food and beverage manager; general purpose and personal shopper; childhood sleep disorder therapist; nutritionist; potty training expert; household appliance technician; nurse practitioner; chauffeur; toddler dispute resolution consultant; arts and crafts administrator; juvenile music and dance director; juvenile fashion consultant; laundress and seamstress; festive season interior decorator; chief executive in charge of vomit cleanup and vomit zone decontamination; chief cook and bottle washer.
She wrote it all down, hoping to tickle Jemima Straight’s funny bone. It was a gamble, of course — Ms. Straight might not even have a funny bone.
Then she took her clean and typo-free manuscript and slid it tenderly into a padded brown envelope along with all the other paperwork. Right after she dropped the children off at school, she drove to the post office and handed over her hopes and dreams to a bored looking clerk.
“Could I insure it?” she asked the woman.
“What is it?”
“It’s . . . well, it’s the manuscript of a children’s book of verses.”
“ Uh-huh. Printed matter, no commercial value. Insure it up to twelve pounds, if you like.”
Lizzie said she didn’t think she’d bother.
“How about if I sent it registered mail?” she wondered humbly.
“You could do that,” the clerk conceded with a shrug.
So Lizzie did, then gave the envelope a furtive good-luck kiss before relinquishing it to careless hands to be weighed, stamped, and thrown casually onto a large heap of waiting mail.
To celebrate this step toward becoming a famous children’s author, Lizzie decided to have her hair cut and blow-dried. Lord knew, it was high time she sorted out the split ends.
She hadn’t meant to do anything more than get a little trim, but the moment she sat down in the pivoting chair and Luis, the bald stylist, strode up, she was overcome by a strange recklessness.
“What do we want to do today?” Luis asked, pulling strands of hair this way and that in an experimental sort of way. “A trim? Or something completely different?”
Lizzie looked Luis boldly in the eye. “Cut it off,” she said. “I want it jaw length. I’m tired of this long-haired look. I want something very, very stylish.”
Luis’s eyes began to gleam with excitement. “Very good,” he said. “And what about color?” He was holding out a strand of hair with raised brows. Squinting at it in the mirror, Lizzie realized that she couldn’t even be said to have dark roots anymore. Her hair was, frankly, two-toned. “Are we interested in highlights today? Or do we want to stay with the natural shade? Either way, I would advise the use of color to even things out just a tad.”
Lizzie found she’d suddenly gone off the prospect of reverting to the mouse-brown look of her schoolgirl days. “Let’s do highlights,” she said quickly. “Give me something really dramatic.”
Luis was almost quivering with anticipation now. “How about some face- framing slices in a really pale blonde? Your natural tone is warm, of course, but I think we need to go cooler to get the drama you’re after.”
Cooler? What on earth did that mean? Never mind, the man looked as if he knew what he was doing. “Go on, then,” said Lizzie. “Do whatever you like.”
J
esus, Lizzie, what have you done to yourself?”
The twinkle was gone from Bruno Ardis’s eyes as he gazed at her in frank astonishment.
“Bruno, I wish, wish,
wish
you’d ring and let me know you were coming before just
materializing
in my garden. You’re not supposed to be in this neck of the woods today anyway. Down, Madge,
down
.”
Bruno batted a gnat away from his face. “Christ, woman, you’ve been starving yourself. They could use you in anatomy class instead of a real skeleton.”
“Why, thank you, you’re too kind.”
It was the day after her haircut, and Lizzie had put on some of her new clothes, just to get the feel of wearing them around the house before she burst upon the world with her new image. She’d chosen a pair of tailored white capri pants topped with the snug black-and- white halter neck top that fit like a second skin. Her feet were resplendent in black sandals with three-inch heels.
“And your hair! Your gorgeous bloody hair — why’ve you gone and cut it off?”
Lizzie put her hand up to her shiny new jaw-length bob. “Now, don’t go insulting my hair,” she said fiercely. “I like it this way, thank you very much.”
Madge began to bark in agitation. She didn’t like the raised voices.
“Shut up, dog!” Bruno shouted.
He took a few steps back and folded his arms across his broad chest. Cocking his head to one side, he contemplated her as a hen contemplates a shiny pebble that might or might not be edible.
“I just don’t think it suits you,” he said bluntly. “The skinniness, and all those streaks in your hair. You look like a different type of person.”
“Yeah? Different in what way?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Tougher. Meaner. Nastier.”
Lizzie broke into a delighted grin. “That’s
exactly
the effect I was aiming for,” she cried. Turning around slowly, she asked, “Do I look tough and nasty from the back too?”
“You look like a complete and utter bitch from the back,” Bruno told her sorrowfully. “It’s something about the way they’ve cut the hair shorter at the nape, I think. And the way your shoulder blades stick out like knives. You could step in front of a TV camera this minute and be one of those terrifying bloody anchorwomen. You’re even wearing the right kind of makeup.”
“Yes, yes,
yes
,” said Lizzie, punching the air with glee. “Things are definitely looking up.”
Bruno shook his head. “Not for me,” he lamented. “I like a woman with a bit of flesh on her. Toast-rack ribs just don’t do it for me. Where’s my cuddly Mother Earth girl with the mussed-up long hair and all the curves? For crying out loud, woman, you’ve gone and starved off your best assets!”
Lizzie looked down at her bosom, respectably restrained in the built-in size C cups of the halter neck top. “I
wish
,” she said ruefully. She’d dropped a bra size, but she’d never have the little fried-egg breasts that she admired so much in women like Tessa — at least, not without surgery.
“What I want to know is, how did you do this to yourself in just a couple of weeks? I swear, when I saw you last, you looked quite normal. Did you go on a crash diet? Give up eating altogether?”
Lizzie gave what she hoped was a mysterious smile. “No crash diet,” she said, quite truthfully.
“You’ve been ill, then? A touch of the old gastric flu? Talking to the white telephone all night? Oh God, it’s not something worse? Some sort of terminal illness?”
“No, no,
no
. Can you stop going on about it now? What are you doing here anyway?”
Bruno shrugged. “I had some time on my hands and I was driving past the lane. I thought if I did a bit of weeding and digging, you might offer me a cup of tea?”
Lizzie gave a grudging smile. “Okay, I’ll go change into some gardening gear and put the kettle on.”
“Great! By the way, I see the ground elder is trying to make a comeback over there near the fence.”
When Lizzie walked out into the garden ten minutes later, she was in her usual tracksuit pants and big T-shirt. As she set the tea tray down on the lawn, Bruno straightened up, garden fork in hand, to look at her.
“My God,” he muttered. “The real Lizzie Buckley returns! Except for the hair, of course.
Now
I see how you did it. You’ve been wasting away for weeks, haven’t you? And none of us the wiser.”
Lizzie kneeled down and busied herself with the tea things. “Not wasting away,” she said. “Shaping up.”
“Shaping up? Mmm, thanks, that’s a damn fine cup of tea. Shaping up for what?”
Lizzie stood up and took a sip from her own steaming cup. “I don’t know,” she murmured. “Just — you know, life in general.”
Bruno put down his tea. “The single life, you mean. Here, let me take your cup.” Before she knew what he was up to, he’d set her cup on the tray and taken her hand. “Could it be you’re
really
shaping up for this sort of thing?”
And he kissed her.
His mouth was hot from the tea, but his lips were cool and smooth. His hands on her back seemed to be feeling out the newly exposed ridges of her ribs and shoulder blades through her oversized T- shirt.
Taken completely by surprise, Lizzie struggled at first to be free. But only moments later, she found herself leaning into the warm hard body, giving herself up to the disturbing sensation of his tongue probing her mouth.
Bam! It hit her like a piano falling out of a second-story window. Arousal. Lust. Passion. Whatever you cared to call it. Shocking in its intensity, yet sweetly familiar, like an old friend she hadn’t seen in a long, long time.
All of a sudden she wanted nothing better than to get this big, warm man into her inadequately sized bed and rip all his clothes off. But why waste time? Why not rip his clothes off right there in the garden?
“Ahem. Ahem-hem-
hem
.”
Blast and damnation.
Lizzie jumped away from Bruno as if she’d been electrocuted. A chorus of barking broke out — Madge shouting the odds at Ingrid Hatter’s hyperactive terrier.
Ingrid herself was standing by the fence, hanging onto a taut leash and wearing a huge, lopsided grin. “Having fun, you two?”
Bruno scowled at her. “Couldn’t you just walk on by?” he growled. “Snogging is not a spectator sport, you know.”
But Ingrid was hardly listening. “Lizzie!” she brayed. “Your hair! It’s fabulous. You sneaky thing! You never said you were going to have it done. You look so — so
chic
. I love the highlights. I’ve been thinking of getting some myself, you know. What do you reckon — maybe a coppery blonde?”
Lizzie gave a shaky sigh, part regret, part relief. “I’d try ash blonde, if I were you. Too much red in the coppery tones. Look, why don’t you come on in, Ingrid? Have some tea. Let the dogs have a proper go at each other.”
“Oh no, I must be getting on. Jack needs his exercise.” Jack, the terrier, was bouncing like a basketball, his pointy little head appearing and disappearing over the fence.
“Let him chase sticks with Madge. That’ll give him a workout, I promise you. Come on, I’ve just made a huge pot of tea.” Lizzie gave Ingrid a beseeching look, rolling her eyes briefly in Bruno’s direction.
“Oh. Right. Very well, then, I’ll come round.” Walking off toward the gate, she began to reel in her dog as if it were a nimble little fish.
“Coward,” Bruno whispered at Lizzie out of the corner of his mouth.
“Wolf in sheep’s clothing,” Lizzie hissed back. Yes, she was a coward. Thank God, thank God! Who knew
what
would have happened if her highly commendable cowardice hadn’t reared its gibbering head. And thank God too for the unapologetic curiosity of Ingrid Hatter, and her heroic lack of any normal sense of diplomacy and tact. If Ingrid had acted the way nine people out of ten would act after inadvertently sneaking up on a couple in a clinch — namely, melt away into the middle distance as quietly as possible — Lizzie would by now be — oh, never mind. Much more sensible to be pouring out a third cup of tea in the sunshine.
But that kiss had been a wonderful thing. That kiss had shown her that she was indeed fully recovered from the worst effects of her depression. Finally, after years of blurry apathy, she seemed once again to be a woman in fully working order. When she whisked James out onto the dance floor at Maria’s wedding, she wouldn’t even have to pretend to be all frisky and frolicsome.
From: Lizzie Buckley [email protected]
Sent: 16 July
Dear Janie
Thinking of you lots lately. Only — what? — two months to go and you’ll be a mother.
I’ve been a real wet blanket about marriage, motherhood, etc. just lately. Not v. supportive of me, knowing you’ve decided to chuck the job and take it all on. Just want to say you won’t regret it. Staying home with small children is the most back-breaking, thankless, unglamorous job in all the world — how could you not love it?
I know you and Simon will be fine, by the way. Come on, he’s loved you since you were thirteen. He’ll know what to do when you’re round the bend with sleep deprivation. It’ll be just like when you were fifteen and wore only black, and told everyone to eff off all the time, and had a stud in your tongue. He’ll know it’s just a phase, he’ll know the real Janie will come home in good time.
Wish James had known it was just a phase.
Have you thought of a name yet?
Lots of love,
Lizzie
P.S. The gardener bloke grabbed me and pressed his attentions on me today. Jolly nice attentions they are too! It’s been so long since
Lizzie stopped typing and stared at the screen.
After a long moment, she put her hand back on the mouse and deleted the whole of her postscript. Some things you didn’t tell anybody, not even your sister. If she’d realized that ages ago, she could have saved herself a lot of grief.